LAFF 2012: THE STRAWBERRY TREE



A scene from The Strawberry Tree.

Cut this crap

By Ed Rampell

Much to its credit, LAFF, which highlighted Cuban films during last year’s festival, is screening more motion pictures from Cuba, which since the Revolution has produced numerous significant cinematic works. Unfortunately, Simone Rapisarda Casanova’s 2011 The Strawberry Tree is definitely not one of them. The word “cut!” does not appear to be in the vocabulary of this Italian filmmaker, who speaks limited English. Using a cinema verite type technique, he lets his subjects -- Cubans living in a north coast fishing village -- meander on and on as Casanova simply lets his camera roll.

During a LAFF 2012 post-screening Q&A the director defended his approach, saying: “I can’t stand fast cutting films. I can’t think. Someone is thinking for me.” But I’d ask: What was he thinking when his characters framed in a single camera angle (often unusually set) blabbed and tinkered on and on; and when Casanova was in the editing room?

To be fair, The Strawberry Tree does has an anthropological sensibility, as it reveals the lifestyle of these fishing villagers, who seem almost completely untouched by the Cuban Revolution (although there’s evidence that they have been educated, a hallmark achievement of the Revolution), socialism and indeed, by the 21^st century. (There is a sort of windmill, but like most in this elliptical film, what it is and its purpose is never explained to viewers who are supposed to be mind readers.) These Cubans live in a village with thatched huts and live largely off of the sea. Nobody is seen going to what we Westerners would conventionally consider a “job”, although they do plenty of manual labor, grinding coffee, thatching roofs, killing and skinning goats, etc. One character repairs a punctured tire using a condom (here, the rubber literally meets the road!).

The Strawberry Tree reminded me of the Samoan villages I lived in during the late 1970s. (BTW, you know the difference between “anthropology” and “sociology”, don’t you? The former is the study of brown, Black and yellow people; the latter is the study of white people.) So I asked the filmmaker what he thought of Robert Flaherty, who shot Moana of the South Seas in Samoa during the 1920s. This Casanova has no love for the renowned director of other classics, such as Nanook of the North, saying he “hates” Flaherty, because “he’s faking everything.” This is a common critique of Flaherty by critics who take the reputed documentarian to task because he often allegedly filmed scripted reenactments he fobbed off as “real life” (sound familiar, “reality TV”?). Fair enough, but unlike Casanova, Flaherty not only knew how to shout “cut!”, but had a sense of story, style, innovative use of film stocks such as panchromatic film, and of that little something called editing.

The main value and virtue of Casanova’s inanely titled strawberry statement is that it has preserved forever on video the lifestyle of the inhabitants of the fishing village of Juan Antonio which, shortly after Casanova wrapped, was wiped out by a hurricane. There’s also a simply stunning underwater shot -- although Casanova seems far more interested in the fish than in his human subjects. But that’s to be expected from a doc that’s simply for the birds, and the worst film I’ve ever seen at LAFF. Cut!


The Strawberry Tree screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival, June 19, 9:50 p.m., Regal Cinemas.